


From the Dining Table/Home

by revebaby



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Break Up, F/F, Mutual Pining, No Happy Ending Fest, Post-Break Up, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25267672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revebaby/pseuds/revebaby
Summary: Joohyun and Seulgi aren't broken up technically. Can they fix their relationship, or will they have to cope by themselves?(Inspired by From the Dining Table by Harry Styles and Home by Bruno Major.)
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kang Seulgi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. From the Dining Table

**Author's Note:**

> so i had written this a while ago but i deleted it. while re-reading it i realized i kinda like it a lot and i decided i might as well share it with you guys!! this was just a way for me to get all my hurt out at the time, so this story may ramble a little lmao i hope you enjoy regardless!! btw pls keep streaming monster and voting on mubeat, our girls worked too hard not to have a first win!! also stan dreamnote

Seulgi and Joohyun aren’t broken up, technically. 

It started with one small argument. Seulgi doesn’t even remember what it was about. That’s how their arguments tend to be because usually neither of them even want to talk about the problem. Instead, they wallow in comfortable silence, because anything other than silence is decidedly uncomfortable.

That night, three weeks ago, Joohyun had stood up wordlessly and left home. The soft click of the door closing has echoed through the hallway since.

She had sent one message: Don’t worry. I’m staying at Seungwan’s.   
Seulgi had replied: When are you coming home?  
Joohyun had said: I don’t know.

And they haven’t spoken since.

They aren’t breaking up, Seulgi reassures herself every time she is alone. They’re just taking a little break. That’s all.

Seulgi is trying to live life as normal despite the cavity in her chest. If anyone at work notices, they don’t say anything. If Sooyoung or Yerim know something happened, they assume it will fix itself like it normally does and don’t bother asking. Seulgi hopes so too.

  
  
So every morning, she goes to the same coffee shop they usually go to before work. She orders the same caramel macchiato as she does with Joohyun, she sits in the same usual spot as she does with Joohyun, and she leaves the same doodles on the receipt with her tip as she does with Joohyun. This way, she can gain some semblance of consistency in her life. She can act like maybe Joohyun will message her again someday soon. 

(She hasn’t yer. Every time Seulgi’s phone flashes with a notification, her heart begins to beat out of rhythm, hoping that it’s her. It never is.)

  
  
‘A medium caramel macchiato and---’ Seulgi is about to say "and a herbal tea", but then she realizes that Joohyun is not by her side to drink it. ‘That’s it, please.’  
‘That’ll be 5000 won. Can I have a name?’  
‘Seulgi.’  
  
‘Seulgi. Kang Seulgi?’ comes a voice from behind her.

Seulgi freezes. Her first thought? Joohyun is stood behind her. Joohyun’s still coming to this cafe too. Meaning there is still hope for them, so why is Seulgi so afraid?

She turns around. It’s not Joohyun.

Son Seungwan, a colleague and close friend of Joohyun’s, dressed in an old blue T-shirt and a pair of jeans, stands behind her with her phone in her hand. She smiles politely. Seulgi wants to smile back but seems unable to.

‘Oh. Hi, Seungwan.’  
‘I haven’t seen you in so long.’  
‘Yeah. How have you been?’  
‘Good. Busy, but good.’ Seungwan slides past her, orders two medium herbal teas. ‘How about you?’  
‘Good,’ Seulgi lies. ‘Thanks for asking.’

She wants to ask about Joohyun, but she can’t seem to get the words out of her mouth.

Frowning sympathetically, Seungwan says, ‘Are you sure? You can talk to me if you want to. Don’t let this make things awkward between us.’  
‘I’m fine. Thank you, though. I’ll keep it in mind.’

They call Seulgi’s name and pass her drink over the top over the top of the glass display. She takes it into her cold hands and holds it close to her body the way Joohyun does too.

Seungwan studies her for a second. She takes her teas from the cashier behind the counter and says, ‘She’s doing okay.’

  
‘Huh?’  
‘Joohyun. She’s doing okay. She’s staying with me.’  
‘Oh.’  
‘Don’t worry too much about her, Seul, okay? And---and maybe…’ She trails off as she bites her lip.  
‘Yes?’ Seulgi asks impatiently. ‘What?’  
‘Maybe try to move on,’ she says quietly, ever gentle, the Joohyun type. ‘Find someone else? I don’t like seeing you like this.’

She gives another kind smile before she walks away with a little wave. Seulgi just stands there stupidly, watching her leave.

It’s then she realizes that Seungwan’s blue T-shirt is one of her own that she had given to Joohyun years ago. She feels the crater in her chest grow heavier, sinking to her feet, swallowing her up. She wonders just how much Joohyun has given to Seungwan.

  
When Moonbyul from work suggests going out for drinks, Seulgi jumps at the chance to get out of that house where the air seems thicker and the walls throw soft words they’d once spoken back at her like knives.

They go to a club a few blocks away. Inside, there are mostly college kids. Seulgi and the other girls, who have all got to be at least five years older than everyone in this club, feel understandably out of place.

‘Should I buy a round?’ Moonbyul asks, receiving an unenthusiastic agreement from everyone still standing awkwardly by the door.

She returns carrying six glasses in her arms. Seulgi takes her share and sips. Whatever it is, it tastes like gasoline and does little to fill the void in Seulgi’s chest, but at least it numbs the ache a little.

Moonbyul, ever the life of the party, gets the others to dance with her in no time. Seulgi, though, who is pretty much empty, isn’t getting tipsy as fast as she usually is. It’s like trying to fill an endless pit.

‘You go ahead,’ she tells them, trying for a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll stay by the bar.’

Moonbyul gives her a worried look, but she leaves anyway, which Seulgi is quite glad for. She doesn’t know how to talk about Joohyun. She barely knows how to talk about anything to anyone who isn’t Joohyun.

There are no bar stools, so she’s forced to lounge against the wall instead. She thinks back to when she was the same age as these kids when she was still in university studying dance.

(She thinks back to her senior year when she met Joohyun. And in a place like this, where nobody can hear her thoughts over the noise, she lets herself wonder, what if she had never met Joohyun? Would things be better?

No, she decides, because even if being without Joohyun kills her, at least she will have known the sweetness of her words and her touch before.

But just for once, she wants to know what it’s like to see Joohyun be the first one to break. Selfish as it may be.)

‘Hi,’ comes a girl’s voice. Seulgi barely notices it. She would ignore it if she had the heart for it, but she doesn’t. Besides, when she looks up, she finds herself entranced by the beauty in front of her.

She’s maybe twenty or twenty-one, her hair dyed sandy blonde, her eyes hooded and smoky.

‘I’m Youi,’ she says confidently, holding out one hand for Seulgi to shake. That doesn’t sound like her birth name. She must know better. She must converse with loners stood at the bar often.  
‘Seulgi,’ she replies, taking her hand weakly. The girl has a fierce grip for such little hands.  
‘You’re really beautiful,’ she says.   
‘Oh.’ Nobody has really called Seulgi beautiful since she met Joohyun. ‘Thank you.’  
‘Are you single?’

She thinks. She thinks hard. 

_Maybe try to move on. Find someone else?_

Joohyun and Seungwan have something. Seulgi doesn’t know what it is, but they have something. Where does she fit into that?

She doesn’t.

This has never been just a break.

‘Yes,’ she tells the girl, then she downs her drink.  
‘Then would you like to dance?’

Seulgi goes home with Youi some thirty minutes later.

  
She barely has time to get through the door of Youi’s dorm room before the girl reaches out for Seulgi’s wrist and pulls her onto the bed, her lips trapping Seulgi on top of her.

It’s not unpleasant. The first person whose name isn’t Bae Joohyun is kissing Seulgi in a long time and it’s not unpleasant. It could even be enjoyable. 

But as she lays over Youi’s body, her tongue searching the girl’s mouth like she’s searching for something or hungering for someone on her tongue, she feels something moving against her inner thigh. Youi brings her knee up, pressing between Seulgi’s legs. 

‘Baby,’ she rasps into Seulgi’s ear.

(Joohyun had once commented about Seulgi’s thighs. She was half asleep, of course, because Joohyun would never say something like that sober and she doesn’t really drink. They’d quickly become Seulgi’s favourite thing about her body.  
‘I like your thighs,’ she’d muttered, her body wrapped around Seulgi’s.  
‘Yeah?’  
‘Yeah. I’d like to kiss you from your thighs up.’)

Seulgi tastes alcohol on the girl's tongue. The sounds she makes are too high-pitched. The way she says ‘baby’ is reminiscent like a punch to the throat. It’s all so foreign, so not-Joohyun, that it makes her feel nauseated. If Seulgi is looking for someone to fill this void, it’s not the girl underneath her. It’s not anybody who isn’t Bae Joohyun.

‘Stop.’  
‘Is everything okay?’  
‘Stop, Youi.’

They break apart. Youi sits up and looks at her, eyebrows knitted together in concern.

‘You have a girlfriend, don’t you?’  
‘What? No.’  
‘You seem very distracted. You kept looking at your phone earlier. Did you fight?’  
A sigh. ‘I just can’t do this. Okay?’

Somehow, Seulgi ends up sleeping in that bed that night. It’s a nice break from the sheets and duvet and pillows that smell of that fabric softener that only reminds her. Seulgi sleeps half decently for the first time in weeks.

  
She still wakes up early, though, as she’s in the habit of doing lately. She looks to her side where Youi lay fast asleep. She looks different in sunlight. With heavy dread in her stomach, Seulgi realizes why she’d thought Youi was as enchanting as she was. From the sharpness of the bridge of her nose, to the big eyes on her face, to the point of her chin, she’s the spitting image of Joohyun.

‘Joohy---’ 

Seulgi has to place a hand over her mouth to stop her from calling the wrong name.

Youi’s eyes blink open. ‘Hey.’  
‘Youi. Hey. Uh, I’m gonna leave, if you don’t mind.’  
‘Of course not. I have class soon.’

Silently, Seulgi thanks God they never got far enough to take off any clothes that weren’t just outerwear. She picks her coat up off the floor and pulls her arms through.

‘Sorry,’ she murmurs, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. Naked, despite the addition of clothes. ‘For last night.’  
‘It’s fine. I get it. Just one thing, Seulgi?’  
‘Yeah?’  
‘I wouldn’t give up just yet. Maybe she’ll take you back.’

It’s the same quiet hope playing constantly in the back of her mind like a flame in the wind on the verge of dying out. Hope isn’t good when you’re in a situation like this. Hope will make you worse because you’ll fool yourself into thinking it’s not all over, because you’ll actually begin to believe they’ll come back to you. That’s how it’s meant to be, right?

They won’t come back though.

‘Thanks, but she won’t.’ 

Youi’s face falls, pitying. People tend to look at Seulgi that way these days.

It’s the first time Seulgi has admitted it to herself. It’s the first time she’s known for certain that the little green light flashing on her phone isn’t Joohyun. With solemn resignation, she realizes it will never be Joohyun. As much as she wants her, Joohyun isn’t coming back.


	2. Home

From the time she learned to walk until her senior year of college, Joohyun had been a lone wolf. She had flings here and there, as everybody does, but there was nobody who made her feel. Well, not until Kang Seulgi.

Seulgi makes her feel like there’s a current running through every single cell in her body. From the tip of her toes to the ends of her hair. Every emotion is intense with Seulgi, and it makes her feel so alive for once.

Joohyun hasn’t spoken to Seulgi in weeks, though. The electricity that used to spark at her fingertips has stopped now. It’s like life has left her body. Even though she’s living, she isn’t alive anymore. She’s numb. Frozen at her centre.

Seungwan, who Joohyun considers her closest friend, tries her hardest to understand, but she doesn’t. She seems to know something isn’t exactly right, but she doesn’t know Joohyun as Seulgi does. She doesn’t know the way her emotion manifests. Seeing the way Joohyun acts, never crying, never frowning, (never smiling either), she seems to assume that Joohyun has moved on.

She hasn’t.

She doesn’t think she ever will.

And she won’t act like this wasn’t her choice. She was the one to walk out. With Seulgi, all emotions take over your entire body. Even the negative ones. It had come to overwhelm Joohyun, but she realizes now that she’d rather feel the pain of the whole world with Seulgi than to feel nothing without her. To feel nothing, it chips away at the person you are, until you’re not a person at all anymore.

‘So, Joohyun,’ Seungwan begins as she gets into Joohyun’s car and hands over a herbal tea from Seulgi’s favourite coffee shop.

‘Thank you,’ Joohyun says, taking a sip and finding it room temperature and blander than it used to be.

‘I saw Seulgi in there.’

Joohyun's entire being stills. She blinks once, then twice, thinking maybe she misheard Seungwan over the radio. There’s nothing to be said. Nothing.

‘Joohyun?’ Seungwan urges, growing worried.  
‘What did you say?’  
She frowns. ‘I saw Seulgi in the coffee shop. I thought you should know.’  
‘Did she---’ Joohyun swallows even though her mouth is dry. ‘Did she speak to you?’  
‘Yes.’  
‘What did she say? What did you tell her?’  
‘I told her you were okay,’ says Seungwan, picking at the sticker on her cup. ‘And I told her maybe she should try to move on.’

Joohyun doesn’t really think.

She throws open the car door without even bothering to check if a vehicle is coming their way and rushes around the side to the pavement---to Seulgi. There’s something urgent in her chest. Like her heart has woken out of its coma and is pulling her to the last person who made her feel anything at all. Who made her feel loved.

She runs. Even though she’s wearing office heels, she runs as fast as her little legs can carry her, barely even stopping when Seungwan calls her name and when she slips on the pavement.

She throws open the doors of the cafe so violently that the people inside turn and stare. Thank God they do, because Joohyun has to scan every face before she meets the eyes that set her on fire inside. That pair of eyes isn’t there. Seulgi isn’t there.

Seulgi isn’t there.

Joohyun stumbles backwards, out of the coffee shop, feeling life leave her again. Her knees feel weak suddenly. If it weren’t for Seungwan holding her by the elbow, she might collapse.

She happens to look down the street to her left through her curtain of hair---the street that leads to their house. She sees a head of unmistakable black hair drawn into a ponytail walking farther and farther away from her.

Of course Seulgi is walking away, not falling down like Joohyun. Of course. Joohyun has only ever burdened her. Of course she would feel lighter now.

‘I thought you were over her,’ Seungwan admits later, after coming home from work with takeout as an apology. Joohyun doesn’t really get hungry anymore.

In true Bae Joohyun fashion, she doesn’t really know what to say. Her not knowing what to say before was the knife that separated the two of them. Maybe comfortable silence isn’t that comfortable after all.

She just shrugs.

‘I’m sorry, Joohyun. I messed things up between you two.’ Seungwan lets out a shaky breath, like she’s going to burst into tears any moment. Joohyun can’t find the will to be mad. ‘I shouldn’t have even said anything to her.’

‘You shouldn’t have,’ Joohyun agrees quietly, ‘but things were already messed up. That’s not your fault.’

‘See, I’m supposed to be consoling you, not the other way around.’ She sniffles, and suddenly tears are running down her face.

Joohyun pats Seungwan on the back gently, hushing her and trying her best to make her feel better, but she never was great at that.

Then she notices that the material under her fingers is very familiar. She looks down. It’s only then she realizes that the shirt Seungwan is wearing is one of Seulgi’s.

‘Seungwan?’  
‘Hm?’ It comes out very nasal.  
‘Where did you get this shirt?’

She looks down like she didn’t even know she was wearing it.

‘I found it in the dryer. I was in a rush. Sorry, is it yours?’

Joohyun doesn’t bother replying. It won’t do any good. She simply rubs Seungwan’s back in small circles, trying to say that it’s okay without really knowing how to say it.

(Silently and selfishly, she thinks that maybe touching Seulgi’s shirt that Seungwan is wearing, she’ll be closer to Seulgi for a little while. This T-shirt, like Seulgi, is making her feel too much at once. How lucky was this shirt to have known a time where Seulgi was Joohyun’s and Joohyun was Seulgi’s? Is this shirt all that remains of it?)

With her hand clutched in a death grip around that shirt, Joohyun feels her eyes start to well up and her vision begins to blur. She places a hand over her mouth to muffle the sob that’s choking her.

Because she doesn’t want Seungwan to worry, Joohyun waits until the apartment has fallen quiet before tiptoeing out of the door and closing it ever so gently behind her.

She tries not to think. As she’s driving her car out of the parking lot, she tries not to worry too much that Seulgi would reject her. If she was in Seulgi’s place, that’s what she would do. People like Joohyun seem unable to love. Yes, maybe she loves Seulgi so much that it often hurts, but is that true love? She doesn’t even know what true love is.

Outside the apartment complex, Joohyun hesitates. She’s sat in her car, looking up at the blackout curtains on the window of their apartment, and she is scared.

Seulgi is everything to her. What if this messes things up to an unforgivable point? What if that’s already happened?

But then she thinks, what if she dies tomorrow without having ever seen Seulgi’s face again? Surely she will die if she doesn’t see her. So is it really a choice?

She stares at the floor the whole way. As she marches up the stairs, she doesn’t look at the door numbers. She relies on muscle memory instead, like her entire body and soul knows where they’re meant to be. Where home is.

A tacky welcome mat comes into view. Joohyun lifts her head. Their apartment, number 7, lays right beyond this door. Home, the only place where Joohyun feels human, alive, is almost within reach.

She has to look away to knock. Otherwise, she might start thinking, and then she might never knock.

There’s no answer. She gives it five minutes approximately before knocking again. Nothing, still.

She looks down at her phone. It’s a few minutes past midnight. Seulgi wouldn’t be asleep at this time.

She knocks one last time. By now, she has noticed there’s no light coming from under the door.

Of course. Seulgi’s busy living her life. She might have been the one to break first, but she was always to one to get over it quickly. Whereas Joohyun is doomed to suffer a life sentence, like a bell always ringing in her ears, only getting louder as she ages and her ears get worse.

Joohyun doesn’t really know what one is supposed to do in this situation. Her whole relationship has been like that.

So she follows her intuition. She sits down on the steps next to the door leading to the fourth floor, and she waits. Any rational person would know better. Joohyun isn’t even sure she’s a person.

Joohyun falls asleep there. She dreams that there’s a soft hand holding onto her arm, that warmth like a blanket overcomes her. In dreams, she is able to feel. She is able to see Seulgi again, and thus she is able to feel. If she didn’t dream, well, she might have died already.

But then her eyes open. It’s cold, but her body is engulfed in a fleece blanket that she thinks she might have bought a long time ago.

It hits her slowly. Seulgi put this blanket here. Seulgi could have woken her. She must not have wanted to. She must not want the drama that comes with it.

Before she can help herself, Joohyun brings the edge of the blanket to her nose and inhales as deep as her lungs allow, almost like one would inhale a drug or fresh air. And, like a drug, her heart begins to beat faster. She’s alive. It hurts.

Joohyun stands slowly, the blanket tucked safely under her arm. She looks at the door. That door has seen so many years of love and silent affection. How must it feel to know nothing but grief now? She hopes Seulgi feels better than that door does.

She thinks about knocking. She stands for a good five minutes, just thinking.

Joohyun is the type to burden people. Seulgi? She’s the type to welcome burden. For once in her life, shouldn’t she experience love that isn’t also burden?

At least Seulgi is okay. That’s all that matters. At least Seulgi is home, safe, and okay.

Maybe she only came here to make sure Seulgi was home. That’s how she’ll feel alive without her. Knowing that Seulgi, her home, is home. That’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!  
> ive just made a twt acc to use for my fics so id appreciate if you followed and kept up to date w my works!! follow here: @revebabying


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